With so many people using smartphones daily, mobile marketing has become a crucial part of any advertising strategy. Because of the amount of time that people spend on their phones, you are missing out on potential customers and sales if you don’t take advantage of mobile marketing.
Our mobile marketing how-to guide will teach you everything you need to know about marketing on mobile devices.
What is mobile marketing?
The short answer is a digital marketing strategy that reaches your target audience through their mobile devices. This could be the standard text messaging sent to their smartphones or app marketing based on the location data collected from their tablet.
With so many marketing channels available on mobile devices, mobile marketing can include SMS marketing or mobile advertising on social media platforms, video ads, mobile apps, mobile-optimized websites, mobile SEO, and mobile-optimized emails, among others. It also includes mobile banner ads and other types of mobile ads.
You will see the best conversion rates from your mobile strategy if you integrate more marketing channels, formats, and methods. Notably, you can incorporate mobile marketing into other strategies, such as attraction marketing.
Why is mobile marketing important?
The rise of mobile marketing ties closely to the rise of smartphones. People could first access email on their phone with the Blackberry in 2003, followed by the iPhone launch in 2007. However, neither of these systems offered location services, push notifications, in-app messages, or many of the other current hallmarks of mobile marketing.
Over time, smartphones evolved and developed more features, and people spent more time on them. To give you an idea of just how important mobile marketing is today, consider the following statistics.
- There are over 5 billion mobile phone users globally.
- The number of unique mobile users worldwide increases by 1.8% annually.
- In 2020, Android users spent over four hours per day on their smartphones, according to data from App Annie.
And the following digital marketing statistics give you an idea of how important mobile marketing is:
- Seventy-seven percent of smartphone users are more likely to buy something if they can do so from their smartphone quickly.
- American companies dedicate 11.2% of their total marketing budget to mobile marketing. This figure is expected to grow to more than 50% by 2022.
- Forty-eight percent of users say if a website isn’t mobile-friendly, they assume the business doesn’t care and will leave.
- Fifty-nine percent of people who use mobile devices are just as used to mobile advertising as they are to TV advertising.
- Fifty-three percent of paid search clicks are on mobile devices.
With those consumer habits in mind, the need to target customers on their mobile devices becomes clear.
What are the types of mobile marketing?
Mobile marketing encapsulates various types of marketing strategies to suit different businesses and target audiences. The methods you decide to use depends on your brand and the marketing efforts your customers are most receptive to.
It’s best practice to have an omnichannel marketing strategy, allowing you to attract new customers from different sources. For example, your marketing tools may include PPC ads that take users to mobile-friendly websites, in-app advertisements, and push notifications from apps.
That being said, some of the most popular mobile marketing strategies involve directly communicating with users, such as via SMS, Facebook Messenger, or WhatsApp. Think of these as types of messages that let you interact with consumers and use similar strategies.
We’ve listed some of the top mobile marketing strategies you may want to consider using.
SMS Marketing
You can spend hours talking about SMS marketing without scratching the surface of what it involves. That being said, the following gives you the most important information in the context of mobile marketing.
To start, SMS marketing is marketing completed via text messages. It is incredibly popular partly because of its 98% open rate, a figure which is unheard of for other types of advertising.
SMS messaging also allows you to instantly reach your customers and take advantage of fast open rates and short response times. Texting also tends to feel more personal than emails or other communication methods.
The specific strategies will vary, but there are a few main categories outlining the types of SMS messages you can send as part of your mobile campaign:
- Promotional messages (sales, discounts, new products, etc.)
- Transactional messages (purchase confirmations, delivery information, etc.)
The following are some more specific situations when you may want to use SMS marketing:
- To announce new products
- To announce sales or discounts
- To thank customers for their loyalty
- To share changes to your hours
- To provide updates on orders or service statuses
- To remind customers about payments
- To share a link to make a payment
- To remind customers of appointments
- To schedule appointments
- To request an online review
- To request filling out a survey
- To communicate internally with your employees
If you plan to use text messaging in your mobile marketing strategy, make sure to follow these best practices:
- Always get an opt-in (this is a legal requirement).
- Make it easy to opt out (this is also a legal requirement).
- Think about the timing of the messages; don’t send them in the middle of the night, for example.
- Identify your company in the message (this is another legal requirement).
- Consider sending messages from a shortcode that is easy to remember instead of a full 10-digit phone number.
App-Based Marketing
Whether browsing social media, online shopping, or checking their schedule, your customers are using apps on their mobile devices regularly. That’s why app-based marketing can be so effective. You can create an advertisement for an app that your customer persona is likely to be using which will be displayed as a banner, pop-up or push notification.
In-Game Mobile Marketing
Game creators often offer free versions of their games to the public. They can monetize the free version by creating opportunities for advertisers. Static ads are incorporated into the game such as through a poster within the gaming world. Dynamic ads are updated in real-time to be targeted to specific users so are more popular.
Location-Based Marketing
Instead of just choosing a social media platform or app that matches your customer demographic to advertise on, you can target your marketing efforts even further through location-based marketing. This is when your advertisement is only shown when the user is within a specific location, making it a perfect strategy for hospitality, retailers, and other businesses with physical locations.
Mobile Push Marketing
Even though browsing sessions on mobile devices are usually on the shorter side, you don’t have to wait for your target audience to visit a specific app or website to reach them. Push notifications deliver messages directly to the device of users to get their attention at that moment.
QR Code Marketing
With all the different URL addresses involved in the online presence of a business, you can simplify the user experience with QR codes. Customers don’t have to remember a specific web address. They can scan the QR code with their phone and be taken straight to the website, encouraging continued interaction and reducing resistance.
Social Media Marketing
There are multiple ways within the marketing channel of social media to reach your target audience, namely content marketing, mobile ads, and messaging.
You could use social media mobile apps such as Facebook Messenger and Whatsapp, just like you would native text messaging, to directly send marketing messages to leads as some customers prefer to communicate through social networks.
Messenger has the benefit of being connected directly to your Facebook page, where you can attract new leads, build trust with potential customers, and makes sales through organic content marketing and in-feed ads. While automation is possible for many SMS marketing platforms, there is even more automation available for Facebook Messenger, including chatbots.
WhatsApp, the end-to-end encrypted messaging platform, also supports external mobile ads with click-to-call functionality. This is a simple way for customers to text you, as the process automatically fills in your number for them.
The idea is that by offering more ways for customers to communicate with you, they can use the method that they prefer.
Mobile vs. Traditional Marketing
For many businesses, mobile marketing is still relatively new and they are more comfortable with traditional advertising methods. To clarify, traditional marketing involves marketing channels that are offline such as ads in newspapers and magazines, ads on TV, radio commercials, marketing via mail, and things like billboards or signs at bus stops.
One of the biggest differences between mobile marketing and traditional marketing is the pricing. Especially for new and/or small businesses running ads on TV can be unjustifiably expensive considering some digital marketing strategies are essentially free such as organic content marketing.
Another major difference is the ability to specifically target your customer profile. Traditional marketing often relies on a limited physical location where the marketing material is shown because the TV show, newspaper, etc is only distributed to a certain set of people. Mobile marketing can reach people all over the world and often can personalize the marketing depending on the characteristics and behavior of the target audience such as location and websites visited.
Mobile marketing is also more automation-friendly and gives you more data and analytics automatically, helping you improve your campaigns. Traditional marketing methods don’t have the functionality to collect as much data about viewers of the marketing materials and how it was received.
By using both types of advertising, you can maximize your reach. After all, not everyone goes online, so if you only used mobile marketing or digital marketing, you would miss a segment of potential customers.
Additionally, some types of traditional marketing can be easier for people to remember or provide more of a hands-on experience. Product testing or samples of a food item are both examples of the latter.
How does mobile marketing work?
Any interactions that are had through mobile devices can be used as a marketing tool. The main campaigns run over SMS messaging, MMS multimedia messages, in-app adverts in the form of banners and pop-ups or push notifications through applications, mobile sites, and even QR codes scanned through the phone’s camera.
Mobile marketing is so cost-effective because most people are carrying around, and using, some kind of mobile device all the time, whether a smartphone, tablet, or laptop. Users are consistently available to consume content through mobile devices. Additionally, mobile devices monitor location. Geographical data is incredibly valuable when targeting your ideal client among the millions of mobile device users, especially if you are a local business.
Demographics like location aren’t the only way businesses can target their audience through mobile marketing. Data is collected about behavior i.e. what they are doing on their devices.
Mobile marketing works best when you create multiple touch points with customers across various marketing channels, building a relationship with your target audience as they intermittently check their phones throughout the day.
Advantages and Disadvantages of Mobile Marketing
It can be a bit of a learning curve to get started with and garner results from mobile marketing. To check whether it’s a good fit for your business and whether the investment is worthwhile, here are the main advantages and disadvantages to take into account.
Advantages of Mobile Marketing
There are plenty of good reasons to use this marketing strategy…
Accessibility
It’s relatively easy to get started with a mobile marketing campaign. You don’t need a massive budget, complex expertise, or advanced technology to benefit from social media content, a mobile-optimized website, or text message marketing. It’s perfect for startups and small businesses.
Personalization
As consumers are faced with multiple marketing messages every day, it’s much more effective to stand out by personalizing marketing content to specifically speak to a subsection of your target audience. With mobile marketing that’s possible because specific targeting is available and detailed data is collected about the results of the campaign. It creates a better user experience and maximizes the ad spend for optimum impact.
Omnichannel
Having a strong online presence requires your business to be visible on more than one marketing channel. Mobile marketing allows you to reach your target audience in different ways simultaneously so you can strengthen your relationship with users and even retarget warm leads. Omnichannel marketing is great for building trust and memorability.
Disadvantages of Mobile Marketing
However, no marketing method is perfect.
Navigation Issues
With the various sizes of mobile device screens, it can be hard to optimize the user experience. What looks good on a laptop and tablet could be hard to navigate for an iPhone user, for example. Creating content that works well for all mobile users is essential to getting engagement with and sales from mobile ads. Without mobile optimization, users will scroll on.
Constant Updates
The online world is always changing. A new app store hit could be released at any moment, drawing attention away from one app to another. Social media companies regularly change their algorithms that determine what content is shown widely. User needs and preferences can be fickle as well, making it challenging to generate enough interest from marketing material to win a conversion.
Privacy and Security
The collection of individuals’ data by companies is controversial. Some consumers feel that it is violating to have their data sold between profit companies. It is potentially dangerous if private information ends up in the wrong hands. So security should be a top priority for mobile advertisers and transparency is the best policy when it comes to your data strategy.
Mobile Marketing Tips & Best Practices
If you’re going to do mobile marketing, do it well. Keep in mind these top tips for maximizing your success and ensuring your marketing efforts are cost-effective.
1. Ensure your site is mobile-friendly.
This is a great place to start. Most businesses have a website now. Make sure it has a good user experience for mobile visitors. If your target audience wants to find a business like yours while on the go, your website needs to be easy to navigate.
2. Come up with mobile-friendly content.
Sitting down to browse the internet on a computer is a different experience from looking up something on a mobile device. So as well as adjusting the design to suit mobile browsers, consider the kind of content they’ll be interested in. Usually, they want to get to the point so short and snappy content does well.
3. Set up and optimize your Google Business profile.
A big reason your audience will turn to their phone to find a business is because they are looking for somewhere to go in the area. Having your Google Business profile set up will help your business to show up in location-based searches and enable potential customers to read reviews of your business before making a purchase decision.
4. Ensure your site is navigable.
So your target audience has been driven from search engine results, social media, text messaging, or some other kind of mobile marketing campaign to your website. Can they find what they need on it? It should be clear where to find everything on your website so visitors can easily get the information they’re looking for and even check out.
5. Set clear KPIs.
You won’t be able to tell what’s working, especially if you’re using an omnichannel marketing strategy unless you have clear key performance indicators that are regularly measured to reflect progress and areas for improvement. The KPIs will depend on the metrics collected by the marketing channel and the goals you’d like to achieve.
6. Research your audience.
Selling to your audience through any kind of marketing campaign is much easier when you know them well. That’s even more important with mobile marketing because many advertising platforms have the functionality to specify the exact user persona you’d like to target. Know their demographics, behaviors, and motivations.
7. Encourage social media engagement.
Not all mobile marketing campaigns will result in instant sales. Taking time to build relationships with your audience members through social media can be very effective. Asking for users to engage with you on social media builds your relationship and gets your content in front of new eyes.
8. Track your results.
Take time to reflect on every campaign you put out. Marketing is rarely spot-on straight away. Adjustments can be made to improve the impact of marketing efforts and achieve a better conversion rate. The closer you track your results, the easier it will be to tell what is working and what isn’t.
9. Combine with text marketing.
Text messages are a great way to reach both previous and potential customers because it’s short, sweet, and direct. Instead of your message getting lost in an email inbox or social media feed, they’ll get a notification of the message pop up on their phone. It can feel more personal and you can ensure fitting marketing messages are reaching the right people in your audience.
4 Mobile Marketing Campaign Examples
Snickers
Advertising on Spotify is not a new concept. But Snickers did it differently. Doubling down on their well-known campaign “You’re not you when you’re hungry”, the in-app ad was triggered when Spotify users listened to music outside of their usual music taste, personalizing the experience.
Samsung
Targeting the right people at the right time is the key to successful marketing campaigns. Samsung was able to do that with its interactive advert for the release of its Galaxy S6 phone. The mobile ad focusing on the super fast charging of the new phone popped up when the battery of the phone user was low.
Nissan
Talking of interactive ads, Nissan created an interactive video ad for its Rogue SUV. When viewers touched the hotspots displayed in the ad, they got extra information about the different features of the car. It turned passive viewers into active users.
Starbucks
Starbucks has created its app to support customer retention. Alongside the loyalty program and ordering capabilities, the app has push notifications to tell users about special offers in real-time. It directly encourages repeat purchases.
Take Your Marketing Strategies to The Next Level
Mobile marketing is taking the marketing world by storm. Big players and small businesses are both able to benefit from this digital marketing strategy. Although you may be worrying about how to fit it in among all your other marketing and business growth efforts.
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